HOMERTON AND HACKNEY WICK.
Homerton was recorded from 1343, often as
Humberton, and recalled the farm of a woman
named Hunburh. (fn. 44) A hamlet (hamella) by
1363, (fn. 45) it grew up north of Hackney brook along
an easterly route from Hackney village and
Lower Clapton. From what became the east end
of the high street (from 1935 styled Homerton
High Street), one way continued east across the
meadows to the 13th-century Temple Mills and
another led south across the brook as Wick Lane
(part of it later Sidney, then Kenworthy, Road)
to the Templars' manor of Wick. (fn. 46) The area
treated here stretches from Chatham Place to the
Lea and from the line of Clifden Road southward to Wick Road and the streets immediately
south of Retreat Place.
Homerton was the most populous of the parish's
six divisions in 1605, with 49 contributors to
church rates. (fn. 47) By 1655 headboroughs were appointed for both Upper and Lower Homerton, (fn. 48)
and the subdivision was retained for manorial
but not for parish government until 1808. (fn. 49)
Upper Homerton was the small area around the
modern Urswick Road. (fn. 50) It may therefore have
been only a part of Great Homerton, recorded
as having almost the same number of houses as
Little Homerton in 1672. (fn. 51) Benedict Haynes, the
holder of Wick manor, in 1605 was assessed
under Grove Street (fn. 52) but by 1664 the holder was
listed as in Homerton. (fn. 53)
Clapton Common c. 1830
Rich Londoners, numerous in Homerton by c.
1600, had settled much earlier along what by
1551 was called Humberton Street. (fn. 54) An undated timber-framed range, of two storeys
beneath its gables, lined the north side from the
later Plough Lane to John (from 1909 Banister)
Street, opposite a way to where by the 17th
century Blew bridge crossed Hackney brook.
The range's prominence on maps and the apparent
existence of a courtyard behind gave rise to a
theory that it had been a manorial seat. More
probably it was a royal official's or citizen's
retreat before it was divided to include the
Plough and several shops, all demolished piecemeal in the 1880s. (fn. 55) Farther east the street
extended before 1565 to a large house at the
corner of a lane which became Glyn Road.
Beyond, at the foot of Marsh Hill, the 17thcentury Tower Place may have been medieval,
since it was later depicted with a moat. (fn. 56)
The west end of the street was separated from
the north end of Hackney village only by the
rectory manor's Church field, through which a
path (later Sutton Place) led to the churchyard. (fn. 57)
Alfordscroft, 5½ a. between the path and Hackney
brook, was conveyed in 1488 by John Broke to
his mother's kin William and Margaret Berytell,
who conveyed it in 1499 to Thomas Marshall,
fishmonger of London, together with the Tanhouse in the south angle of the path and the
street. The estate passed in 1508 to William
Botry, a mercer, with another house next to the
Tanhouse, in 1511 to Sir John Heron, who
acquired the rest of Church field, and in 1538 to
the diplomatist Sir Ralph Sadler (d. 1587). In
1551 Sadler sold the land, including two houses
and a cottage, to John Machell the elder (d.
1558), an alderman of London and once thought
to have been the builder of Sutton House. That
house in reality was built for Sadler (fn. 58) and named
after Thomas Sutton (d. 1611), founder of the
London Charterhouse and reputedly England's
richest commoner. (fn. 59) Sutton probably lived on
the adjacent Tanhouse plot, which the Charterhouse received on his death and retained until
the 20th century. Machell's estate passed to Sir
James Deane (d. 1608), then to Olive Clarke,
and in 1688 from her grandson John Clarke to
Sir George Vyner. The house was divided c.
1752: in the 19th century the west half was a
boys' and then a girls' school and the east half
the home of the vestry clerk Charles Horton
Pulley. (fn. 60) The building was bought c. 1890 by the
rector, who adapted it as St. John's Institute for
young men, and in 1938 by the National Trust.
Having stood empty from 1982, proposals for its
conversion into flats in 1988 led to the formation
of the Sutton House society, which ensured its
conservation. (fn. 61)
Nearby, although unidentified, was a freehold
house, 'upon the corner of Humberton Street',
apparently conveyed in 1595 with property
which had been Robert Burgane's to Edward,
Lord Zouche (d. 1625). (fn. 62) Zouche cultivated a
physic garden, acquired other plots, and was
Homerton's most distinguished householder in
1602 (fn. 63) but, despite tradition, (fn. 64) was not buried in
the parish church. (fn. 65) His seat was probably conveyed in 1620 by Paul Ambrose Croke to the
Master of the Rolls Sir Julius Caesar (d. 1636),
a native of Tottenham but resident at Hackney
in 1634. (fn. 66)
Other householders in 1605 (fn. 67) were Lord Rich
(later earl of Warwick, d. 1619), Lord Cromwell
(d. 1607), and Sir John Peyton (d. 1630), governor
of Jersey, (fn. 68) who like Zouche were perhaps only
occasional residents since they did not contribute
to repair of the church. Payments were made by
Sir Thomas Leighton, governor of Guernsey,
whose son married Zouche's daughter, (fn. 69) Sir
James Deane, Sir Edward Holmeden, and Roger
Clarke, aldermen, (fn. 70) Sir Marmaduke Wyvell (later
a baronet), (fn. 71) and Sir William Hynde.
Homerton's 57 chargeable houses in 1664 included Sarah Freeman's with 22 hearths and
Henry Clobery's at Hackney Wick. (fn. 72) In 1672
Great Homerton had 55 houses and Little
Homerton 58, together almost a quarter of all
those in Hackney. Prominent residents included
John Forth, alderman of London, who was
charged on 23 hearths in 1672 and sold Lordshold
manor in part to (Sir) Thomas Cooke (d. 1695). (fn. 73)
Cooke possessed large gardens where expensive
improvements were planned in 1691 and which
included greenhouses, 2 a. stocked with rabbits,
and ponds supplied by pipes. (fn. 74) The precise site
of his 'great house', with an access road running
north from the west end of the high street, (fn. 75) and
the extent of its grounds are unknown. Apparently not a manorial seat, part of the property
was bought in 1704 by Richard Ryder (d. 1733),
including the later Upton House in Urswick
Road, and other houses perhaps in Alderman's
Walk (later Homerton Row). Ryder soon made
building leases for three plots north of his own
house. His family had also built immediately
south of the residence by 1717 and was probably
responsible for most nearby development north
of the high street. (fn. 76)
Homerton had 104 residents who paid poor
rates in 1720 and soon had more than any other
parochial division, with 155 by 1735 and 213 by
1761, although only 220 in 1779. (fn. 77) There were
at least eight taverns in 1725, apart from the
White Hart at Temple Mills; they included the
Plough, a disorderly house in 1734, the Coach
and Horses, perhaps the best appointed since
courts baron were held there in the 1750s, and
the Greyhound at Marsh gate, the eastern end
of the village. (fn. 78) Nine of Hackney's 36 select
vestrymen lived at Homerton in 1729 and 7 in
1740. (fn. 79)
In Ram's chapel of 1723 Homerton possessed
the parish's first place of Anglican worship to be
built after the parish church. (fn. 80) Stephen Ram (d.
1746), a goldsmith, was a manorial constable in
1718 and later an active vestryman. (fn. 81) His chapel
was built on a copyhold west of the Plough,
which he acquired in 1722 as one of a succession
of Londoners, including Charles Booth, a salter,
admitted in 1702; by 1704 it contained a new
house with 2 a., another house, and four cottages. (fn. 82)
The estate passed to Ram's brother Andrew, to
Andrew's widow Eleanor, and to John Hopkins,
owner of Hackney House. (fn. 83) The chapel had its
own trustees from 1775 and later gave rise to a
school; building obscured the identity of Ram's
own residence, which may have been at the
corner of Plough Lane and Homerton Row. (fn. 84)
Edward Brooksby in 1725 bought from John
Smith of Hammersmith other property which
had been held by Charles Booth. Some of it lay
farther east on the north side of the high street,
where Booth had acquired lands formerly of
Richard Cheney, whose residence had contained
14 hearths in 1664 and 1672. The estate inherited
in 1753 by Edward's cousin William Brooksby,
a London haberdasher, included four houses in
the street, (fn. 85) part of property which he left to his
widow Mary and then to Susannah Frames, who
in 1805 was admitted with her husband John
Musgrove. (fn. 86) Edward also left several houses in
Brooksby's Walk, with scattered parcels, to William Frames. (fn. 87) More property, separated in 1706
from some which had passed to Booth, was
conveyed by F. J. Tyssen's trustees to William
Pratt, a brickmaker, in 1743, when it included
eight houses. (fn. 88) Pratt acquired many more sites
in or near the high street in the 1740s and
1750s, (fn. 89) all of which passed by will dated 1759
to his wife Jane and on her death by 1772 to
their six children. (fn. 90)
In 1745 building was confined mainly to the
high street, (fn. 91) although at the west end it
stretched along Plough Lane to Homerton Row
and south along Bridge Street to Money or
Morning Lane. The lane led west past the
solitary Old Gravel Pit chapel of 1715-16 (fn. 92) to
Hackney village and south-east beside the brook,
where it was called Water Lane, to Well Street
and so to the London end of Mare Street. By
1697 Bowling Green House had been built south
of Morning Lane, from which it was reached by
converging ways along the lines of Chatham
Place and Meeting House path; it was rebuilt c.
1762 and later called Grove House. (fn. 93) From the
high street Shepherd's Lane also led to the brook
and had a barn and cottages, three of them new
when claimed by Pratt in 1743. (fn. 94) A brewery,
presumably by the brook, was owned in 1724 by
Thomas Prior and Thomas Marsh, whose property when sold in 1731 included a lease of the
White Hart at Clapton. (fn. 95) The south end of
Brooksby's Walk existed in 1745 and was so
named by 1759, when Pratt left six houses
there. (fn. 96) On the south side of the high street the
Gill mead estate of the Milborne family included
the house leased as a workhouse until its sale in
1769. (fn. 97)
Hackney Wick in 1745 was reached through
fields by Wick Lane. Apart from a few cottages
where the lane turned east south of the brook,
on the site of Silk Mill Row, the hamlet consisted
of little more than the spacious Wick House,
soon probably rebuilt, and its attendant buildings. (fn. 98)
In 1768 King's Head academy bought copyholds east of the Plough. Development by the
academy, from 1823 Homerton College, (fn. 99) and
the extension of Brooksby's Walk constituted the
main changes in the high street and to the north
in the late 18th and early 19th century. (fn. 1) Southwest of the high street more striking changes
began with the leasing in 1780 of premises in
Shepherd's Lane for Berger's paint factory,
which led to the building of cottages around
Thomas (later Ribstone) Street on St. Thomas's
hospital's land along Water Lane. (fn. 2) To the west
was the Woolpack inn, licensed probably by
1760, which gave its name to a brewery later
owned by Ford Addison. (fn. 3) Much of the hospital's
land was taken for residential housing which
merged with that spreading from the south end
of Hackney village. In Paradise Place (later the
south end of Chatham Place), the New Gravel
Pit chapel of 1809 was flanked by Hackney Free
and Parochial school from 1811. (fn. 4) Behind, in
Retreat Place, Robinson's Retreat was finished
in 1813 and two pairs of houses, also designed
by Samuel Robinson, were built to the east. (fn. 5)
Chatham Place was built up from 1815 and new
villas built by John Musgrove formed the east
end of Retreat Place in 1824. (fn. 6)
Meanwhile the Charterhouse had built on 1¼
a. containing the remains of an old house, the
Tanhouse or its successor, which had served as
a school. A terrace of 12 houses was planned in
1796 as the south side of Sutton Place, with
mews behind, but finally 16 were built under a
lease of 1809 to William Collins, probably one
of the family which also took land for the
Paragon. (fn. 7) Houses and shops nearby in the high
street, Bridge Street, and Morning Lane were
leased by Susannah Musgrove in 1822. (fn. 8) In
Brooksby's Walk, where her husband John had
acquired William Frames's property, the
younger John Musgrove made a building lease
in 1821. (fn. 9)
The most respectable parts in 1821 were Upper
Homerton, (fn. 10) around the later Urswick Road,
with 19 merchants or gentry, and Sutton Place,
with 15. A few lived nearby in Homerton Row,
although most of the 80 householders in its
extension Alderman's Walk, which had new
cottages, (fn. 11) were tradespeople or labourers; so too
were c. 130 in Brooksby's Walk and most of the
79 in 'Homerton', presumably the high street.
To the south Homerton Terrace was largely
middle-class but Morning Lane with 32 names
and Water Lane with 99 were humbler, as were
New Cut (later Ball's Buildings and from 1894
Link Street) with 41, Bridge (from 1938 Ponsford)
Street with 29, and Shepherd's Lane with 60.
At Hackney Wick, where the White Lion was
licensed by 1785, (fn. 12) a snuff mill was acquired c.
1787 for Leny Smith's silk factory. (fn. 13) W. H.
Ashpitel held land between Wick Lane and
Hackney brook from 1808 and had leased three
small sites for building by 1813; c. 25 more
cottages, presumably put up by Ashpitel, passed
to his sons in 1852. (fn. 14) Leny Smith in 1820 built
or refronted 13 cottages, conveyed by his family
to trustees in 1827 and to John Musgrove in
1828; (fn. 15) as Silk Mill Row, they stood south of the
lane's junction with Cassland Road, which led
from Well Street and near whose east end was a
row of shanties built from 1806 called Hackney
Bay, later nicknamed Botany Bay. Smith also
built Sidney House, midway between Hackney
Wick and Homerton, in 1808-9. A few buildings
stood farther east near the old Wick House in
1831, where Wick Lane turned north towards a
rope works and Froggatt's mill. (fn. 16) Smith and
Froggatt were among 36 residents, most of them
tradespeople or labourers, recorded at Hackney
Wick in 1821; a further 76, including many
gardeners, were at the Bay and 19 in Baker's
Row, also at Hackney Wick. Listed under
Homerton, although separated from it by the
marsh, were 6 residents at Temple Mills.
Social decline may have started with the expansion of the workhouse, of Berger's factory,
and of industry at Hackney Wick. It increased
with speculative building and with the construction of the railway from 1847. Victoria Park
station served Hackney Wick from 1856,
although Homerton had its own station only
from 1868. (fn. 17)
South of Retreat Place, small houses by 1843
formed Arthur, Margaret, and Brunswick streets
(later Brooksbank and Collent streets and
Cresset Road). They had been built by William
Bradshaw (d. 1855), an auctioneer also active in
Grove Street, (fn. 18) who was responsible for much
of Homerton's expansion northward. In 1836 he
bought the White House on the east side of
Brooksby's Walk and in 1839 Home field on the
west, with high street premises and c. 5 a.
stretching back to the Grove (from 1907 Homerton Grove). (fn. 19) Part was sold for St. Barnabas's
church and its attendant buildings in 1845 and
1847, (fn. 20) when the rest was being covered with
cramped terraces: Albert (from 1887 Belshaw
and from 1914 Wardle) Street, crossed by Victoria and Brook streets (from 1875 Holmbrook
Street), which in 1860 were slums. (fn. 21) To the
north-west land behind Homerton College was
bought in 1852 by the East London union for a
new workhouse and infirmary, under construction in 1854 and enlarged for imbeciles in 1858. (fn. 22)
Expansion southward produced both culs-de-sac
and roads which passed under the railway, from
Isabella Road in the west to Sidney Road, a
renaming of most of Wick Lane (later Kenworthy
Road), at the top of Marsh Hill. (fn. 23) The first
presumably commemorated Isabella Ball, whose
father Robert Hopkins had left 17 copyholds
from Sutton House to Bridge Street; she sold
some land for the railway and in 1852 her son
John Ball broke the entail of the rest. (fn. 24) Church
(later Barnabas) Road had been planned as far
as Hackney brook in 1849, when building land on
either side was held by the auctioneer Marmaduke
Matthews and his partner George Horatio
Wilkinson, a timber merchant. (fn. 25)
South of the railway, housing by 1865 surrounded the grounds of Sidney House and
stretched across the new Wick Road, an eastward route from Water Lane near the line of the
culverted brook. Much of the road was built up
after 1860 by Matthews and Wilkinson, who had
bought some of the bankrupt Leny Smith's
property. (fn. 26) Homerton thus reached the suburbs of
south Hackney bordering Well Street common
and Victoria Park. Housing also spread northward to merge with Lower Clapton. In 1867 the
London & Suburban Land & Building Co. was
diverting footpaths from the end of Brooksby's
Walk, which it was to extend across its Clapton
Park estate as Chatsworth Road. (fn. 27) The building
of a fever (later the Eastern) hospital along the
Grove filled the only large site west of Brooksby's
Walk and was said in 1874 to have driven the
wealthier inhabitants away. (fn. 28)
Shops lined much of the high street, with seven
public houses, and a few had existed in Brooksby's
Walk in 1849. By 1872 there were many more,
along both sides of Wick Road. (fn. 29) The last private
gardens between the high street and the railway,
from King's (later Digby) Road to Crozier Terrace,
made way for the culs-de-sac of Sedgwick and
Nisbet streets (named from 1870). (fn. 30) Infilling
south of the high street virtually ended with the
expansion of the workhouse and infirmary and
of Berger's factory and the building of Ballance
Road (named in 1869) and Hassett Road over
the grounds of Thomas Ballance's Sidney
House. (fn. 31) Vacant plots in Retreat Place were
leased in 1874, although the almshouses kept
their garden on the north side. (fn. 32) Fields remained
only between Homerton and the marsh. The
lines of the G.N.R. and G.E.R. divided Hackney
Wick, whose focus had shifted eastward to
house industrial workers: spaces were being
filled between an eastern section of Wick Lane
called Gainsborough Road, the railways, and
factories served by the Hackney cut. (fn. 33)
Housing spread east of Brooksby's Walk from
the 1880s, (fn. 34) along parallel roads leading north:
Pratt's Lane, renamed Glyn Road in 1881 and
straightened at the high street end, was the
longest and had been built up to Lower Clapton's
Millfields Road by 1891. Roads to the east had
been begun as far as Pincey (from 1905
Daubeney) Road, next to the moated site which
still marked the eastern limit of building. South
of Marsh Hill there were houses along Sidney
Road around a board school of 1882 east to
Swinnerton Street, named in 1881 after the
Milbornes' heirs, and beside the railway around
Bartrip Street, named from 1876. Swinnerton
Road replaced the north-west end of Red Path,
leading from Marsh Hill to Hackney Wick; the
south-east end of the path skirted G.N.R. sidings,
next to where the rope works in 1880 was bought
to house the Eton mission. (fn. 35) Meanwhile the
acquisition of Sidney House as a convent in 1872
had been followed by the establishment of a
Roman Catholic school and church where
Sidney Road joined Wick Road. (fn. 36) Building
joined Homerton to Hackney Wick, where by
1891 the triangle between the G.E.R. line, the
cut, and Gainsborough Road had been almost
wholly built over.
The high street had no tramways and sometimes appeared too quiet to deserve its name. (fn. 37)
Congestion nonetheless led to changes, ranging
from a widening of the entrance to Brooksby's
Walk in 1876 to rebuilding of the range containing
the Plough, where the street was narrowest, c.
1887. The north side of the Grove was to be
widened around the junction with Brooksby's
Walk in 1884. (fn. 38)
Signs of social decline in the high street included the use of no. 17, where the local
benefactor Henry Sedgwick's daughter Marian
had lived until 1860, by a pawnbroker's by 1872,
the conversion of Upton House into a truant
school in 1878, its rebuilding c. 1885, and the
acquisition of the early 18th-century Eagle
House at the corner of Homerton Row by a dyer;
demolitions in Homerton Row c. 1887 were
followed by denser building in Halidon Street. (fn. 39)
Homerton as a whole was characterized c. 1890
by poverty. The well-to-do were confined to
Urswick Road and its western offshoots St.
John's Church Road and Sutton Place. Residents nearby were 'comfortable' around and
opposite Ram's chapel, in Homerton Row and
other streets in the angle with Urswick Road, in
Isabella and Mehetabel roads south of Sutton
House, and beyond the railway in Chatham
Place and Retreat Place; others lived in avenues
east of Brooksby's Walk, in Marsh Hill, Sidney
Road, and around Hassett Road. The comfortable
and the poor were mingled in the central stretch
of the high street, the Grove, Brooksby's Walk,
south of the railway in Morning Lane (which
from 1887 included Water Lane), Digby, Wick,
and Ballance roads, and at Hackney Wick in
Gainsborough and Windsor (later Berkshire)
roads. The poor lived mainly in side streets like
College Street (later Row), Durham Grove, and
Bradshaw's Margaret Street, the very poor
behind the high street around Holmbrook Street
to the north and Nisbet and Crozier streets to
the south, and off Victoria Road which bisected
Hackney Wick. All three of the poorest areas
were the only ones in Hackney to contain the
lowest, 'semi-criminal' class. (fn. 40)
Hackney Wick, notorious for its jerry building, (fn. 41)
was described in 1879 as a district of 6,000
people who had sunk to the lowest depths. (fn. 42)
They included many drifters and, being downtrodden, were found by the Salvation Army in
1897-8 to be less violent than those of Bethnal
Green; Eton college's mission, despite lavish
expenditure, had little moral influence. Houses
had been built on layers of refuse, where
brickearth had been excavated, and a recent
insistence on concrete floors had led to higher
rents. Several back-to-back cottages had already
been demolished. Infant mortality, although not the
general death rate, was the highest in Hackney. (fn. 43)
From the 1890s building continued on the
few sites left near the marsh. On the south side
of Marsh Hill the former tollhouse, having
been a farmstead, made way in 1901 for the
completion of Mabley Street, (fn. 44) thereafter the
limit of permanent building east of Sidney
Road. The moated site north of Marsh Hill was
threatened in 1910 by Trehurst Street, started
c. 1900 from the Clapton Park end and completed
by 1913 along with most of Adley Street to the
east. (fn. 45) On the marsh beyond, the first timber
works at Homerton bridge existed from c. 1910. (fn. 46)
Meanwhile the social standing of Homerton's
west end declined further with the rehousing of
Hackney parochial infants' school in Isabella
Road in 1896, the building of Barlow's tin box
factory immediately north of Sutton Place c.
1903, and the conversion of Sutton House into
an institute, reopened in 1904, (fn. 47) Upton House's
southern neighbour, built by the Ryders and
owned from 1847 by the Rivaz family, had been
demolished by 1905 for enlargement of the
truant school. (fn. 48) Industry spread around
Chatham Place: Grove House (no. 36 Chatham
Place) became a clothing factory and had lost
half of its garden by 1898; the nearby garden of
Robinson's Retreat made way for Paragon shoe
works in 1912. (fn. 49) William Bradshaw's heirs sold
the site of Vine Cottage in the high street for a
fire station in 1906; the family sold a block
between Holmbrook and Belsham streets and
Homerton Grove in 1910 but retained 189
houses in Homerton, including Eagle House, for
sale in 1927. (fn. 50)
In the period between the World Wars,
Homerton was equally residential and industrial.
In 1928 it differed from much of Hackney in
that industry occupied purpose-built premises
rather than converted dwellings. Tranby Place
in the high street east of Brooksby's walk had
been cleared and six factories had replaced
houses north of Sutton Place. Hackney Wick
also had purpose-built factories, mainly along
the canal and older than the cheap terraces
housing their workers. (fn. 51) Nisbet Street and parts
of Hackney Wick were still the poorest areas in
1930. (fn. 52)
The built-up area spread only to the northeast, where in 1937 the L.C.C. took part of
Hackney marsh for the Kingsmead estate.
With 17 five-storeyed blocks, a school, and
shops, it extended building from Adley Street to
the factories at Homerton bridge. (fn. 53) Off the high
street Hackney M.B. replaced slums behind the
old Plough range, in Homerton Row and College
Street, with 160 flats in Banister House, opened
in 1935. (fn. 54) Clearances were also ordered for Nisbet
Street in 1934, the south end of Bridge Street
and part of Morning Lane in 1936, and Rosina
Street in 1937. (fn. 55) Six-storeyed blocks forming
Nisbet House, with 311 flats, were opened by
Hackney in 1938. (fn. 56) Cramped rows off Morning
Lane had made way by 1940 for Woolpack
House and Ribstone House, the first blocks to
form the north part of the L.C.C.'s Morningside
estate. Beyond Retreat Place, streets were renamed between 1936 and 1938 and partly
rebuilt; Lennox House had been built in Cresset
Road by 1938. (fn. 57) Among buildings demolished
were the 18th-century Grove House, empty
since 1912, in 1921 and Ram's chapel, to widen
the high street. (fn. 58) Longer streets to be renamed
were Church Road, called Barnabas Road from
1936, and Sidney Road, called Kenworthy Road
from 1938.
War damage led to an increase in public housing. (fn. 59)
Demolitions included Homerton College for an
extension of Banister House, with a further 235
flats by 1960, (fn. 60) and Robinson's Retreat for part
of the Morningside estate, including Cresset
House and Brooksbank House which by 1952
stretched south to Cresset Road. Building on the
north part of the estate, where more blocks had
been named early in the war, continued before
and after 1950.
In 1960 Berger's factory closed, (fn. 61) whereupon
almost the entire area south of the railway
between Morning Lane and Barnabas Road was
cleared for the L.C.C.'s Wyke estate. Early flats
included Baycliffe House and Risley House in
Digby Road from 1959 and Musgrove House in
Barnabas Road from 1960. Nearby the L.C.C.'s
Gascoyne estate, extending into south Hackney,
included the ten-storeyed Kingscroft Point,
finished in 1967, and Heathcote, Vanner, and
Ravenscroft points of 1968, all system-built and
soon reinforced. In Berger Road, Latimer House
and Gilby House were built as part of the Wyke
estate c. 1982. (fn. 62)
Changes in Homerton High Street included
the demolition of Eagle House in the early 1950s
and of buildings to the east. (fn. 63) Hackney M.B.'s
six-storeyed block of 75 flats called Marian
Court (fn. 64) stood west of Ponsford Street by 1960
and the similar Bridge House to the east, opposite
Banister House, by 1967. Priory Court had been
built in Brooksby's Walk by 1970. The high
street, as a shopping centre never a rival to
Hackney village or Dalston, was characterized
by such public buildings as the fire station and
library, both Edwardian but rebuilt in 1974, and
the gaunt piles of the extended workhouse
which served as Hackney hospital. (fn. 65) Many
terraces remained in Glyn Road and its neighbours
east of Brooksby's Walk, but flats bordered
Marsh Hill at Humberton Close and Newbury
Court by 1980 and at Studley Close by 1985.
Although Metal Box and other firms left,
industry survived near the railway and in 1985
Homerton station was reopened. (fn. 66)
At Hackney Wick, which had public baths
from 1935 and a library from 1947, (fn. 67) changes
were more sweeping. South-west of the baths,
the L.C.C.'s Eastway Park had been opened by
1960 as an old people's home. Opposite, between
Eastway and the factories along the railway and
the cut, the G.L.C.'s Trowbridge estate left only
the north-south line of Osborne and Prince
Edward roads from the centre of the old street
pattern. First opened in 1965 and completed
in 1969, the estate included 117 bungalow
homes but was most striking for its seven
21-storeyed towers, (fn. 68) with mosaic facings and
glass balconies.
The railway's division of Hackney Wick was
reinforced from the 1970s by the partly sunken
Cowdry Road and the elevated East Cross
motorway. Construction of the East Cross route
involved the demolition of Hackney Wick station,
which had been closed since 1943, although a
new station in Chapman Road was opened in
1980. (fn. 69) Plans to redevelop the Trowbridge estate
were modified in 1987, after only three of the
tower blocks had been demolished. (fn. 70)
In 1992 the railway sidings had made way for
low-rise housing at Edmeston Close, still to be
reached from Eastway along Red Path, which
crossed Cowdry Road. Between Berkshire Road
and the cut three-storeyed ranges formed Leabank Square, which was partly occupied. The
only long terrace from late 19th-century Hackney
Wick survived, partly neglected, north-east of
the former baths as nos. 61-79 (consecutive)
Eastway.
From the cut, Homerton Road and Eastway
led straight between recreation grounds towards
Temple Mills bridge. A few large factories stood
near the end of Eastway and others bordered
Waterden Road, which ran north to a busy
intersection west of the bridge. (fn. 71) Where Temple
Mills Road crossed the Lea, past the site of the
mill and its cottages, a rebuilt successor to the
White Hart stood empty. Nearby was the entrance
to Lee Valley park authority's Eastway sports
centre, beyond the boundary. (fn. 72)
Homerton has few pre-Victorian relics, apart
from Sutton House, and Hackney Wick has
none. The district is one of housing estates,
factories, and small businesses. Apart from
cleared sites west of Brooksby's Walk, there are
spaces for recreation only where building gives
way to Hackney marsh.
Homerton High Street is ill served by shops,
although a few lie east of Brooksby's Walk. The
dominance of municipal flats is relieved chiefly
by St. Barnabas's church, (fn. 73) its churchyard, and
attendant ragstone buildings. A few town houses
remain on the south side of the street. No. 168,
of three storeys over a basement and with a
Tuscan doorcase, is the better preserved of a mid
to late 18th-century pair, no. 170 having a
warehouse covering its ground floor. (fn. 74) Nos. 140
and 142, east of Digby Road, have Tuscan
doorcases and are probably early 19th-century. (fn. 75)
The gentility of Upper Homerton is recalled
by Sutton Place, since 1969 part of the conservation area around Hackney church. (fn. 76) The south
side, nos. 1-16, is a stock-brick terrace of three
storeys over basements, nos. 1 and 2 having
added mansards with dormers; details include
pilastered doorcases, fanlights, and first-floor
iron balconies. (fn. 77) The range was built under a
lease of 1809, possibly to the design of the
Charterhouse surveyor William Pilkington, who
had been concerned with earlier plans, and
forms a group with nos. 1-22 on the north side. (fn. 78)
Sutton House, to the south-east, is Hackney's
oldest domestic building and one of the few
urban properties of the National Trust. (fn. 79) Threestoreyed and built of brick on an H plan for Sir
Ralph Sadler in the 1530s, Sutton House retains
some of its original exterior diaper brickwork
and of its early decoration and fittings. Fragments
of painted decoration survive in the north-west
room, the parlour, and there is 16th-century
panelling in that room and in the large central
room on the first floor. Only one original window, of six lights with a single transom, survives.
The staircase in the west wing is 17th-century.
The eastern range housed the kitchen and service
rooms. Its cellar was probably approached by
an internal stair, whereas that under the west
wing had an external stair. The house was
divided into two dwellings c. 1752, when the
central range was refaced and given sash windows and a second doorway, and sash windows
were put into the fronts of the wings. The
subdivision of the hall, and panelling and the
staircase in the east wing, probably date from
that time. The east wing was rendered in the
later 19th century when there was some interior
remodelling. Additions to the south culminated
in a large meeting room, the Wenlock Barn, of
1904. Restoration, begun in 1990, has aimed to
display the Tudor house in its undivided state
while adapting the additions of c. 1904 for use
by the community. The building was reopened
to the public in 1992. (fn. 80)
Towards Hackney Wick, the former Sidney
House survives as the north wing of the Sacred
Heart convent. It is almost hidden by later
buildings and is a brick villa of c. 1800, of five
bays and three storeys beneath a stuccoed cornice
and a mansard roof with dormers. (fn. 81) Housing of
1959-60 on the Wyke estate has been praised,
both for the framework of low terraces around
the towers and for landscaping. (fn. 82)